My Sony R7 Reverb from eBay came today, dead. I replaced a dead battery tonight but that didn’t clear anything up, still just passing a dry signal and a dead rotary encoder knob. Not sure what the issue is, if anyone knows a good Sony tech let me know, I have the schematics. Also need a good Lexicon tech too.

Unfortunately, no one I know besides Jakub, Dusty, and Sam agree with me and over the past few years I’ve come to realize that Tim & Eric are rather polarizing figures; you either love them or you hate them. I’ve refrained from posting on them in the past just because it’s a little off topic for this blog and I doubt most of you come here looking for hilarious shows to watch. But today I came across Daniel Murphy’s Esquire article about the series of ads Tim & Eric and Zach Galifianakis created for Absolut Vodka and I thought it was an interesting look at how they approached the project from an advertising perspective. The three spots — which I consider to be some of Tim & Eric’s best work — came out last year as part of the Absolut World campaign. The vodka maker basically gave them an open ended commission; they could make whatever they wanted as long as they mentioned the product. I’ve never worked directly in advertising, but I’d have to imagine this would be a dream gig for anyone in the industry.

Went to my first Dub Wars a few weeks ago which is a monthly in New York that usually is mostly Dubstep, since then i’ve been hooked on the really low end heavy tracks like Lukid’s Slow Hand Slap, its hard to listen to if you don’t have good speakers because a lot of fun in listening to the songs is the ultra clean warmth the kick has.

Recently we hosted a mix that featured this Viul song Wound Cotton Wound which is out this week and includes a Benoit Pioulard remix. Viul is an ex-band member of Esmae which Benoit was the drummer and Viul played guitar. I love the control on the range in the static sound Viul makes, its more inviting to new listeners and half way thru he lightly eases in acoustic guitar and pulls back on the noise, a perfect song to listen to all the way thru for friends that haven’t heard of Fennesz.

I haven’t heard from Deadbeat in ages but he was one of the first consistent Minimal Dub producers around and released on the great ~scape label out of Germany. Organ In The Attic Sings The Blues cuts out the MCing and generic raggae sound and plays around in the more interesting yet always enjoyable experimentation of new sounds in a genre thats been around for ages.

Norway is pumpin’ out the slow disco producers left n’ right and they all have been pretty impressive especially Blackbelt Andersen who has a new record out that is self titled. Reminds me a little of what I loved about Swayzak’s Snowboarding In Argentina which i’ll post later this week.

On a side note I never get to thank you all enough for checking out the blog and the music daily that we get to share with you. It really means a lot to me when I find out any of you go out and support the musicians hard work by just buying a $.99 song or when you just find a new song here that you want to listen to over and over by just streaming it, all of you are a pretty amazing in my book.

While digging around for Omni covers for last week’s post, I came across blog reader Eric Carl’s Flickr and his downright incredible set of vintage sci-fi / fantasy paperback covers. These really are mind-blowingly good and positively dripping with inspiration. I’ve never seen any of these before but I feel I’ve been somehow influenced by them anyways. They encapsulate everything I love about this period in design; just look at that typography! The “Dark Universe” cover is just off the charts good. Thanks so much for posting these Eric! Quick question if you’re reading this Eric: Do you actually own these? How did you come across find such a nice collection? Link

HUUUUGE bonus: can anyone name the font used in “Dark universe”? Is that even a font or do you think it’s hand drawn? Let us know in the comments.

Lusine does it again with a gorgeous ambient album called Language Barrier, I don’t know how he does it but he cuts up the lyrics and they still sound like honey being poured onto baby oil, makes me want to bash any music I make out the window using that cricket bat from Spinal Tap.

Modeselektor + Apparat = Moderat, I wasn’t a big fan of Modeselektor besides one song that i’ll post next time but i’ll buy anything that has Apparat on it. This pairs up nicely with the Telefon Tel Aviv album, I really need to sit with this record again because only a few tracks grabbed me. A New Error has that colossal analog drive to it that is always nice to lose yourself in for a few miniutes.

I was doing my best to steer clear of this Dark Was The Night compilation just because I felt like everyone already had it and no one needed to read about it but here it is The Books feat. Jose Gonzalez covering Nick Drake and all its glory, all joking aside this is an amazing cover and love both the musicians doing the cover.

DJ Koze just put out a CD that compiles all the remixes he did over the years, I especially love this Heiko Voss one and the Matthew Dear one is pretty outstanding as well.

With spring all but here (at least in San Francisco) I thought it would be a good time to whip up some new tees using American Apparel’s summer-friendly Tri-Blend Heather shirts (50% Polyester / 25% Cotton / 25% Rayon). The result is this new 1976 on American Apparel Tri-Blend Heather Blue. When I first designed the original version of the 1976 tee, I had this sort of vintage track tee vibe in mind. At the time, AA didn’t offer a Tri-Blend shirt in blue so I ended up going with the cotton baby blue — which I think has it’s own thing going on — but once I saw the new tri-blend blue I knew it would be perfect for a subtle remix.

Shirts have always been a fun design challenge for me. Unless you’re a pretty big company, you’re pretty limited in your color choices when it comes to blank shirts. Sure, American Apparel (one of the blank shirt manufacturers with the best cuts and colors) has a great selection of colors, but most are pretty straight-forward, bright colors. For most of my designs I envision washed out, faded colors and there really aren’t that many companies offering that kind of blank these days. AA’s tri-blends come very close and the fit and feel are incredible, so I usually end up going with that combo. But it can be a rather daunting task to balance your Pantone ink choices with the dye colors to try and reproduce the style and look you’re going for. You can always mock it up in Photoshop, but you really never know what it’s going to look like until you print one up and see the real thing.

After all that comes the task of trying to get photos of the shirts that accurately reproduce the color and texture, which can be even harder than designing the shirts in the first place. This time around I had a Gretag card and some color-correct CF lights so it went a little more smoothly. I shot in NEF format RAW on the Nikon and got some pretty usable output this time. The process of brining the RAW shots in is always a bit tedious, but it definitely yields more accurate and flexible results. I usually try to get one shot that’s as color accurate as possible (first shot above) for the storefront, and then another, more effected version (second image above) to give another perspective on the shirt. I’m still planning to rent a better lens for a day or so and see if that helps any, although after this most recent session I am feeling a little more confident with my D80. Also, a quick thanks to my little brother Kirk for modeling the shirt! I usually have to hold the remote while taking the shots of myself and it’s a lot harder to frame up shots and get the settings down that way.

I am usually reluctant to list my favorites of anything. It’s hard to establish a consistent criteria with which to judge all items fairly, and even if you do, the list changes so frequently that it’s pointless to commit it to writing. My one exception has always been logo design, and Scott’s recent post got me thinking about it again. For as long as I’ve been interested in design I have always maintained the exact same favorite logos. They aren’t necessarily in any particular order, but the three pictured above are far and away my favorite marks of all time. I’ve never been satisfied with logos that gain their strength over time or with gradual brand association; for me, a successful mark works right away.

Mother and Child by Herb Lublin
The immediate cleverness of this one is probably what is most attractive to me. I remember staring at it for about five minutes the first time I saw it in the back of Area. I couldn’t believe how at once simple and wonderfully complicated it was. The ampersand has always been my favorite symbol, so to see it employed so unusually was also very exciting.

Paradox by Christopher Simmons
Another perfectly clever image. It needs no explanation and the “aha” moment occurs instantly. I’m still impressed how much wit was able to be squeezed into one tiny little mark. Like many great logos, it appears incredibly simple and seemingly obvious, but only after it’s come to fruition at the hand of another designer.

Modest Mouse by The Decoder Ring
What a perfect single image. This is one I can’t look at without feeling incredibly jealous for not thinking of it first. It encapsulates so many different feelings and emotions in one single mark, while still managing to be aesthetically pleasing at the same time (though I can’t stand the colors). The designer sums it up nicely: It’s an idea I came up with because it represents stasis — the balloon will never go up or down. It’s just a general feeling I have about everything: Every time we seem to cure or solve something, another problem pops up.

Of course there are many other wonderful logos out there, but this is a top 3 after all. List yours if you can think of them!

I haven’t done a mix since 2005’s Pink Rest At Low Levels which you can download here, its an ambient/IDM mix of my favorite music I’d listened to when I would fool around in Adobe Illustrator. This new mix called Goodnight Gracie is kind of an ode to a weekly I did for 3+ years with Matthew Dear, Ryan Elliott, and Scott Brandon at a lounge called Goodnight Gracie in Ann Arbor. Ryan Elliott and Matthew Dear now are big international DJ’s and Scott and I took the night over once they started touring. Ryan would let me open nearly every night and play ambient and deep melodic house before they went on so I could hear Broker/Dealer on decent speakers, I hope you can at least enjoy the end.